<html>
<a href=“http://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki/doku.php?id=submission_page”><img src=“http://lucianofsamosata.info/images/contact.png” /></a>
</html>
As-Suhrawardi and Nominalism: A Brief Overview
<html><p xmlns:dct=“http://purl.org/dc/terms/”><a rel=“license” href=“http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/”><img src=“http://i.creativecommons.org/p/mark/1.0/88x31.png” style=“border-style: none;” alt=“Public Domain Mark” /></a><br />This work (by <a href=“https://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki” rel=“dct:creator”>https://lucianofsamosata.info/wiki</a>), identified by <a href=“http://meninpublishing.org” rel=“dct:publisher”><span property=“dct:title”>Frank Redmond</span></a>, is free of known copyright restrictions.</p></html>
Authored by Frank Redmond, 2006
With the arrival of As-Suhrawardi, we see classical, medieval Arabic Philosophy come to an end. As we will see, As-Suhrawardi becomes the first to introduce Nominalism into a philosophical tradition that had traditionally presupposed a Realist position. His Nominalism is not only iconoclastic in itself, it can be seen as a forerunner to today’s Nominalistic postmodernity, but it also completely obliterates the whole medieval conception of the universe. After As-Suhrawardi, if we are to take him seriously, philosophers can no longer assume that the universe is a stable thing that we can deduce absolute knowledge from. The answers are no longer just “out there”, but are rather human interpretations, human agreements, of what is “out there”. Thus, the universe becomes a place subjectively constructed and interpreted by man alone, and is not a place that exists But, what is Nominalism? Nominalism is a philosophical position which holds that abstract universals have no existence outside of the realm of language. Also, the mind is incapable of formulating universal concepts. General ideas held by men are merely names functioning as labels for a collection of things or a series of certain events. The opposite viewpoint is something called Realism; this position has historically been best espoused by Plato. In Plato’s philosophy, descriptive terms like “blue” and “bloody” have an independent actual existence in an abstract realm. The “blue” or “bloody” found in nature has a directly parallel form in the abstract realm. In Nominalism, these ideas only exist in the imaginations of us humans; they do not come from immutable, actual forms.
As-Suhrawardi goes about “deconstructing” the universe by establishing his extremely nominalistic worldview. In his treatise Hikmat al-ishraq, he very explicitly declares that predicables are mental objects (McGinnis & Reisman 518). Take for instance the predicable “blackness”. “Blackness” is a concrete particular which arises with the thing that it exists in. This “blackness” exists in the particular intentionally, or, in simpler terms, only by virtue of definition, a definition which is provided by the viewer of the object in question. So, in this way, “blackness” has no existence outside of the mind of this one viewer. While men can agree that an object has “blackness”, this does not means that they all see the same color, but only agree that the color of the object is called “black” due to semantics. We make the connection between “black” and the object only our minds, not because some external form has dictated that this object is black. Furthermore, As-Suhrawardi wishes to overturn the Peripatetics’ view on definitions, a view which he considers self-limiting and deceptive. The Peripatetics concede that a definition is composed of two parts: “genus”, which designates a general essential belonging to the universal true nature of the thing in question, and, “difference”, which designates the specificity of the thing in question. The Peripatetics also concede that new knowledge can only be formed from what is already known. As-Suhrawardi’s rebuttal is that if something new about an object comes to the attention of the viewer, and the viewer has no apprehension of this new essential specific since it has never been seen before, then no new knowledge can ever be gained by the Peripatetic way of definition. Moreover, this means that certain essential specifics can be overlooked by using the Peripatetic method. So, trying to thoroughly define an object using the Peripatetic method is impossible, for knowledge of the true nature of the object will never be certain. To As-Suhrawardi, the best we can do is to try to collectively define things; we can only agree on something’s true essential specifics because none of us have direct access to true knowledge of objects. By classifying things according to their “genus” and “difference”, we are limiting the definition of a thing far too much and are overlooking many other attributes that do not fit into the “genus” and “difference” methodology.
Another issue As-Suhrawardi has with realism is that it implies that an infinite number of essences must independently exist in the universe in order to account for the infinite number of essential specifics found in things. This brings up the problem of the infinite. The problem of the infinite is not a problem in nominalism, since, in nominalism, essential specifics only exist in our collective minds and this number must be finite due to the fact that there are a finite number of people who can only think a finite number of essential specifics each. He sets up the argument like so: In every series there is an order, and this order must be finite. For instance, if one takes the integers of 3 and 4, there must be a finite number of numbers between the two integers since it is a measurable span. The nominalist worldview is analogous to this demonstration; every person lies between the two integers and, therefore, every person can be counted. In realism, since their is no limit to the number of essential specifics, the only solution is to posit an infinite number of real forms to coincide with them, but a true infinite is absurd.
To sum up, with As-Suhrawardi, we see the old order crumble and a new one being constructed. Although many centuries would pass before As-Suhrawardi's philosophy would be fully understood and replicated (we have seen this happen in our postmodern age), his effect was immediate insofar as he represents the end of an age and the genesis of a new one. This new age of philosophy brought an end to the arcane architecture of the old order with its gothic like levels of being. As-Suhrawardi proved that these orders of being were not “really” existing, but only existed in the imaginations of those who postulated their existence. This would prove to be his greatest and most lasting contribution.
WORKS CITED
“As-Suhrawardi”. A Reader of Classical Arabic Philosophy. Trans. McGinnis and Reisman. 29 November 2006.